Lunch Packing Tips for Busy Parents

These lunch packing tips are going to change how you do lunch, and therefore, change your life! I actually shared my biggest lunch-packing tip with a friend recently and she said it was “life-changing” and that I should write a blog post about it. So, here we are!

If you think a lunch packing tip being life-changing sounds dramatic, then you are clearly not the one who packs lunch in your household, just sayin’.

Those of us who do pack the lunch, and for multiple children, know it’s basically a part-time job. But, I have some tips to make it take less time and be less of a hassle. So let’s dive in, ’cause none of you have time for extra chit-chat… you probably need to go pack lunch.

My Best Lunch Packing Tips, Tricks & Hacks

Here are my top tips for packing school lunches:

Lunch Packing Tip #1: Invest in Time-Saving Supplies (In short, buy more lunchboxes.)

Stick with me here, this is a good tip.

Here is how lunch packing used to go for me: pack the lunch and send to school, unpack when the kids got home, wash lunch boxes and repack them again, repeat over and over every day, all week.

Sound familiar? Yeah, that is a waste of time.

Now here is what lunch packing looks like for me: Sunday I grocery shop, prep (more on this below), and pack lunch for Monday through Wednesday.

On Monday when the lunchboxes come home, I’m not rushed to wash anything. Instead, they get washed as I am doing the other daily dishes. On Tuesday, repeat the same, which really means just unpack the lunchboxes and wash them with other daily dishes, no stress.

On Wednesday, the third and final lunchboxes come home and I am not in a rush to wash those either, because I now have two clean lunchboxes from Monday & Tuesday.

Wednesday night I pack lunch for Thursday and Friday using those two lunchboxes.

This lunch-packing hack saves time and stress.

So instead of being stressed to wash and repack lunchboxes every single day, I pack lunch just two days per week, and I have clean lunchboxes on both of those days already.

The best thing I ever did was to buy multiple bento boxes. Okay, so actually, I said I wanted more to make my life easier (after a good friend told me this is how she does it, so credit to her, I am not a lunch genius, she is).

Then, upon hearing my complaints, my husband got another set for the kids, but same thing right? I use these bento boxes (pictured below). I now have 3 for each kid. This allows me to follow the schedule above for the week.

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Note: My kids don’t always use the bento boxes. Sometimes one of them wants something in a thermos instead, more on this below!

Lunch Packing Tip #2: Adjust to what works for your schedule.

For me, it works to pack lunches on Sunday and Wednesday because Sunday is a chill day for us, and we currently have no after-school activities on Wednesdays.

Make your plan work for you, so consider what day or night of the week it would be less stressful for you to pack lunches, and make your schedule around that.

You could, in theory, you could pack all 5 days at once but I have found that 3 days in advance is as far as I can go without the food getting weird for my kids.

Lunch Packing Tip #3: Plan & Prep Once Per Week

You can do this any day that works for you, but I typically do this on Sundays because we grocery shop as a family that day. Afterward, I wash, cut, and prep anything I can for the week, for example:

• Wash and cut fruits like strawberries, blueberries, canteloupe
• Pit cherries and remove stems
• Wash and cut veggies like peppers, carrots, cucumbers
• Boil pasta (if one of my kids is having pasta for lunch that week)
• Cook breakfast meats (a batch of bacon and/or sausage so I can set it out with some fruit in the mornings for easy breakfast)
• Make a ranch dip if I’m doing carrots and ranch that week in lunchboxes

Once this prep is done, packing lunch gets a lot easier. All I have to do after that is make any needed sandwiches and pull out my bins of prepped fruits and veggies to fill the lunchboxes.

Lunch Packing Tip #4: Prep Snacks Ahead of Time, Too!

You can save time in the busy mornings by prepping snacks ahead of time, too. If you don’t use prepackaged snacks, you can go ahead and portion out snacks when you’re packing lunch, for example:

• Portion chips, goldfish, or other snacks into baggies (reusable or not)
• Pull snacks out of the pantry that you know you’ll send for the week, and drop them in a reserved basket that you can pull from for the week

Lunch Packing Tip #5: Adjust for Thermos or Lunches that don’t fit in a Bento Box

As I mentioned above, sometimes one of my kids wants a hot lunch in a thermos. In this case, I can’t just pack multiple bento boxes and throw them in the refrigerator to pull out daily. These types of lunches will require a bit more daily work, but this is where weekly prep comes in handy to make it as easy as possible.

In this case, you’re just going to prep as much as you can ahead of time. Here are a couple of examples:

• Pasta: Cook a box of pasta, let it cool and store in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Each morning, warm up a bowl of pasta (mine like it with butter and parmesan), and drop it into the thermos. Done! I normally put the thermos, fork or spoon and then other sides like an apple, etc into the lunchbox and skip the ice pack in this case.
• Nachos: Sometimes my daughter wants nachos for lunch. In this case, she gets a bento box and a thermos. I pre-pack the bento boxes with sour cream and cheese, and reserve the big section for tortilla chips. I cook a big batch of taco meat during my prep time, then just heat up a small amount of it each morning to put in her thermos. Throw in a spoon and she’s all set.

If you want to eliminate having to wash a thermos daily, you could follow the same theory and get more than one.

This is the one I use and like:

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More Lunch Packing Tips:

Here are a few more tips for packing lunch for kids:

• Make it fun with these printable lunchbox jokes.
• Pack foods you know your kids will eat! This eliminates waste and ensures they don’t go hungry during the day.
• Limit packaging! Kids don’t get much time to eat at school and every little bit helps to maximize their time. Open those string cheeses!
• Get the kids involved in planning and packing their meals. They love it and you can even give them jobs to help with prep and/or packing.

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Now I’ve spilled all my tried-and-true lunch packing tips! If I come up with more, I’ll update this post! Have any tips to share? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

Now that you know how to pack, check out my huge list of ideas of what to pack for lunch here.

More Ideas for Busy Moms:

Motherhood & Not So Fancy Garlic Bread

How to Do a Family “Make Your Own Pizza” Dinner

How to Cook & Peel the Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs